His original plan was fairly simple, if not exactly family-friendly: take over Earth and make humans into pets. Instead, Snowball chose to lead the dogs through a portal to their own world. The episode closed with a meta joke about how a planet run by dogs might be worth visiting someday, perhaps in a storyboard-driven show with 11-minute episodes.
According to series co-creator Dan Harmon, the writers never completely forgot that ending.
“It’s been a longstanding thing at the top of the season when we’re coming up with ideas,” Harmon told Polygon. “That first episode with Snowball specifically ended with a meta reference to the idea of a spin-off or something, so it was deliberately like maybe there will be more to this story.”
What happens when Morty visits the dog planet
The new episode, titled “Jer Bud,” finally cashes in on that old setup. Morty Smith travels to Snowball’s planet expecting, reasonably enough, to catch up with an old friend and enjoy the novelty of a civilization run by hyper-intelligent dogs.
What he finds is much uglier. The dogs have been selectively breeding a native hominid species to keep as pets. Snowball, now surrounded by the uncomfortable results of that system, becomes deeply self-conscious about how Morty sees him.
The episode turns the earlier joke inside out. Snowball once rejected humanity’s treatment of dogs, only to build a society that mirrors the same cruelty in a different form. The premise also lands as a blunt reflection of real-world puppy mills and selective dog breeding, which is not exactly the breezy vacation brochure Morty seemed to be expecting.
Before long, Morty’s visit to Snowball’s palace falls apart when he is pulled into a hominid uprising. The reunion quickly becomes a war story, because this show rarely lets anyone have a normal afternoon.
The reunion was built for conflict
Showrunner Scott Marder said the writers liked the built-in tension of bringing Morty back into Snowball’s life after so much time away.
“We got attracted to the idea of Morty returning to a The Last King of Scotland-type thing with an already very complicated relationship with an old friend, but an old friend who's gotten himself in an even more complicated situation,” Marder told Polygon. “It just felt like it had a lot of fun conflict there.”
That conflict gives the episode more bite than a simple nostalgia cameo. He is not just back for recognition applause. He returns as someone who escaped oppression, gained power, and then recreated a version of the system he once hated. For Morty, that makes the visit personal in a way the usual multiverse disaster does not always manage.
By the end, Morty and Snowball make peace, though the dog planet is left devastated. Whether Snowball truly changes after this, or finds a new way to make things worse with excellent posture and a robot suit, remains open. Given that it took eight seasons and 13 years to revisit him, viewers may want to be patient. Extremely patient.
